Velocity
by jlencre
Summary: Post "Cloak" but before "Dagger," Tony is in a very dark place. This stands alone but is actually part of a longer plot that is currently fighting me. Rating, pairings and warnings will change (if the damned thing stops fighting me) when chapters are added. (Sorry about the previous formatting failure. It should be fixed now.)


Tony's feet pounded the damp pavement as he ran as if he were being chased by demons. He was, in a sense, except the demons that chased him were all his failures and the "teasing" words of his friends and colleagues. His ears heard the physical panting of his breath and then rhythmic _thump – thump – thump_ of his feet hitting the pavement; his mind heard the sound of the shrill ringtone that would give him away to the FBI followed by his own panicked yelling as his body slammed into the ground as those assholes threw him out of their moving car while he was still trapped in the body bag.

If only he'd been smarter, he would have left NCIS after that case. If he'd been smarter, he would have realized that claiming jurisdiction over a dead body and solving a case would always be more important to Gibbs than Tony's life. Surely if not that case, then the next should have tipped him off to his true place in the "pecking order." In his mind, he heard Gibbs telling Kate, "You only take orders from me."

Ah, Kate. Neither she nor McGee had had any respect for him, and why should they when the Boss clearly didn't? Was it any surprise that his internal soundtrack could play a hundred instances of Kate and McGee gleefully mocking him for kissing a transvestite with no thought that maybe, just maybe his problem was with kissing the person who had gutted his friend like a fish? He could survive the plague and then save both their ungrateful asses the very day he came back to work, but they would still have no problem setting him up for a blow to his ego and pouring water in his face as a "joke."

Kate might not have been much of a profiler, but she certainly knew how to balance the insults with the moments of team bonding to keep Tony's loyalty to her and to the team. He was Gibbs' loyal Saint Bernard, but even a little kindness from the individual members easily made him the entire team's bitch. It was that loyalty that had him redirecting Gibbs' wrath his way instead of letting it splatter all over his teammates. He knew intellectually that it wasn't healthy, but that didn't stop him from stepping in front of the metaphorical shitstorm every time. That had been true when it was Kate and was still true even now when she had been dead for years.

Tony increased his pace, trying to refocus on the snow-covered grass and damp pavement in front of him and the jolt of pain in the knee he'd injured in college rather than the horror in his memory. Even in Tony's nightmares, he still felt Kate's blood hit his face and heard her body hit the cement roof in front of him as she was murdered. Like his mother's death, it was a memory he would probably never escape.

Then came Ziva. Beautiful. Deadly. The woman had been Ari's handler and the one to compile the dossier on the team for her half-brother. It had taken months after Ziva had been made part of the team before he could hear her voice without also hearing Kate die. It certainly wasn't as if Ziva had made it any easier. She made her contempt for him clear on a daily basis with her snide comments and outright insubordination. She wouldn't even listen to him long enough to realize what an epically bad idea it would be to fire a gun in a sealed metal shipping container. Of course, it was only Tony who had been hurt. "Just a scratch" that had needed over a dozen stitches to close, but that didn't matter.

Tony's lungs burned as he gasped in the cold winter air as he pushed himself to go faster and his internal soundtrack skipped on to the thousands of _thwacks_ as Gibbs' hand – and one time Ziva's – hit the back of his head in reprimand. It was no wonder his colleagues had no respect for him when their boss openly disdained him. Even when he'd left, the strongest praise Tony received was a vague "You'll do." It was hardly the ringing endorsement a new team leader needed, but that combined with the years of disrespect certainly set him up to fail as a team lead and to fall neatly into Jenny Shephard's schemes. Even if Gibbs was a bastard 99% of the time, taking away the only constant in Tony's life to screwed him up enough that he let himself be whored out for a personal vendetta. Tony had to wonder if he'd ever stop hating himself over that mess. He doubted it.

When he'd come back, Gibbs had shown over and over that he would choose everyone – Ziva, Abby, Jenny, and even Mike Franks – over Tony. It was really a shame that Tony hadn't taken his only chance to escape the never-ending cycle of manipulation when he'd had it. Looking back, he had to wonder if the position in Spain was real or just a test of his loyalty. It didn't matter now, he guessed. He was back to being the team's bitch.

Domino was Gibbs' most recent chance to gut him. He'd never expected too much from the man – Tony's father had trained him decades before that no one could be totally trusted – but he'd thought they'd had an understanding at least. He'd thought that no matter how big a screw up he was in his own life, Gibbs trusted him when it came to the job. Domino had proven him wrong yet again.

Maybe, it _was_ his fault that he hadn't been able to keep Ziva from going into battle mode when the soldiers had shown up during the Domino exercise. He was the SFA. His injuries were the result of Ziva's lack of respect and his own lack of leadership skills. But that didn't explain Gibbs choosing to shut him out, and Gibbs had made it clear that it was _his_ choice, not Vance's. It wouldn't have hurt so much coming from Vance. The man hated him like hell on fire for getting Jenny killed, so that Tony would have understood. But Gibbs? It had felt like getting knocked out by Mike Franks and having Gibbs blame _him_ instead of Franks all over again.

'Just shut up.' Tony rebuked himself. 'Yours choices are gone, and you've got to play the hand you're dealt. It doesn't matter that Gibbs doesn't give a shit. Suck it up and be a man. Whining like a baby isn't going to change things.'

No, no amount of regret would change the past. All he had was right now, and no matter how fast Tony ran, he'd never managed out outrun the joke and caricature that he had become.


End file.
